For the first time since records began, the average age of women giving birth
has reached 30. But don't write off us older mothers...

A mother’s place is in the wrong. From the heart-stopping moment that those two blue lines start to form on a pregnancy test, that’s the one thing you can be sure of. And if you’re an older mother, then lord help you; Michael Gove got a good press from teachers in comparison.

The ONS explained the growth of the middle-aged mama as a combination of reasons: more women going to university and wanting to pursue a career, the rising cost of bringing up a child, getting married later, and uncertainty in the job and housing markets.

While the baby boom appears to be over in general, older women aren’t listening. There’s been a 33 per cent rise in women aged 35 to 39 giving birth over the past decade, and since 1991 the rate for the over-forties has trebled. The headlines were stark: “Labour wards are full of older women”; “Mothers on average the oldest in the world”. The Royal College of Midwives was clear in its response: older mothers are putting additional stress on the health service because they tend to have more complex births. And earlier this year Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, said that the number of women choosing to start a family later was a “worrying issue”.

Oh dear. And that’s before you get on to the subject of older mothers being more tired than their younger peers or our propensity to pop our clogs while our kids are only in their thirties. But there’s good news for the dogged, if slightly dog-eared, older mother. Last month, a survey from Boston University School of Medicine revealed that women who have children naturally after the age of 33 are twice as likely to live into their mid-nineties as those who have their children earlier – and they may pass that longevity on to their children. Another study suggests that women who gave birth after the age of 40 are four times more likely to live to the age of 100.

The reason behind this doesn’t mean you should book in for IVF treatment at the same time as booking your place in a retirement home. Rather, the ability to have children naturally at an older age indicates that your body is ageing more slowly. As someone who conceived their first child naturally a few years after the age of 33, and only missed the big 4-0 giving birth to the second by months, I’m now holding out for my telegram for the Queen instead of merely feeling I’m aged 100 during those moments at 3am wiping up vomit for the fifth time.

Meanwhile, we need to look more closely at the research that suggests there’s a “best” time to give birth, according to Dr Martin Ward Platt of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. “There are very few disadvantages for being an older mother,” says Dr Ward Platt. “Everyone used to think that 25 was the safest time to give birth and it got riskier as you got older. But actually it was that low-risk women were choosing to give birth at that time – a reverse causality. Now the age at which it’s deemed safest to give birth has gone up in parallel with women giving birth later.”

Kirstie Allsopp: 'Women are being let down by the system. We should speak honestly and frankly about fertility and the fact it falls off a cliff when you’re 35'

Well, that’s not a picture I recognise. Most university-educated women I’ve talked to are terrified by the thought that waiting a day over their 35th birthday means no baby, or a baby with a serious abnormality. But halt the baby panic. It’s more difficult to get pregnant the longer you leave it, but according to recent studies, between three quarters and four fifths of women aged 35-39 will get pregnant within a year. And while your chances of having a baby with a health problem do increase, the risk is still small.

Meanwhile what happens after you get out of the labour ward? Research has variously said that older mothers are less likely to become obese than young ones, they have children who are likely to do better at school, and are emotionally and practically more ready for a baby.

“Generally parents who are older may be economically better off which is an advantage to a child, and having more mature parents isn’t a bad thing either,” says Dr Ward Platt.

So let’s hear it for the older mother: don’t write us off. The real problem is whether you have them at 20 or 40, you’ll still fret over that first tooth, first day at school, first boyfriend or girlfriend, first car, first job. There’s no age limit on parental worry.